Facebook Helps Reunite Sisters After 40 Years

Finally, last spring, with the youngest of her kids in high school, Ferguson had time to focus on that missing link. "I started praying for guidance," she says. Around that time, she began noticing a rash of Facebook posts seeking lost relatives. She thought maybe she could create one about her sister, although she knew it was a long shot. The prospect brought a wave of fear. "I was afraid it wouldn't work — but I was also afraid it would work," she says. "I didn't know what I would find. What if I found her dead?" She also worried about opening the family door to cyberspace. After mulling it over for about a month, she decided it was worth the risk.

Ferguson told no one of her plan except for one friend, who snapped a photo of her holding a sign that asked for help with her search. Up it went on Facebook, along with the few details she knew about her family background: the fire, and her sister's name and estimated age.

Next, Ferguson asked people to share her post: There could be one person in your network who could help us reunite, she wrote. That night, she told her husband what she had done. "He worried we would hear from a bunch of nutcases," she says. Her siblings found out soon enough, too. Dena, for one, was excited.

Within days, replies started rolling in. One woman had known Ferguson's parents in Kentucky; another had taken care of Raylene for a short time after the tragedy. They unearthed and e-mailed old photos, little postcards from another life. Ferguson posted those pictures on Facebook, building a narrative. She became "obsessed" at times, she says, neglecting friends and family. She couldn't tear herself away from the notes — any of them could hold an important clue. "My 14-year-old son started getting tired of fixing his own dinner," she says. "My husband never complained, but he was cleaning up after the kids. Laundry was piling up. Life was going on in the house without me. I was always busy wading through messages."

She was amazed by the kindness people showed her, but not every response was helpful. Some were "crazy," Ferguson says. "One guy said he was a Hollywood producer; he wanted to come take pictures of me," she says. "Another guy said, 'I have your sister here with me in Alaska.' " There were moments when she wondered if she should shut it all down.

In an unexpected twist, the oddest response of all, she says, came from a woman who turned out to be invaluable — Charlene Summers, or "Char," a self-described "search angel." Summers, who lives in Wisconsin, helps people find lost loved ones as a hobby, on her own time and generally on her own dime.

But Ferguson was suspicious, thinking Summers might be running a scam: "She started asking all these personal questions, like 'When were you born?' I thought, What a sicko; this person is trying to take advantage of me in a vulnerable situation." So she decided to block Summers on Facebook.

Summers, however, came back at her again from another Facebook account — her personal one, not the one she used for her volunteer work. Summers also wrote to one of Ferguson's Facebook friends, explaining that she wanted to help. Ferguson decided to hear her out.

Speaking on the phone from Kenosha, WI, Summers laughs about the initial cyber-encounter, saying this is typical. In an age of Internet fraudsters, people often assume she is one of them. She persists, she says, because she likes solving mysteries and helping splintered families reunite. "I love the feeling I get when I find answers that change people's lives," she says, adding, "Not everyone is sunshine and flowers — some people just don't want to face the past. But for those that do, I'm happy to help."

She became interested in people-finding when she helped a friend track down a brother two decades ago and witnessed the emotional reunion. Summers started helping other people find lost relatives, eventually creating a website called Wisconsin Family Finders Registry. On occasion, she has worked as a paid researcher for professional search services, but she doesn't enjoy that as much, she says, because she's anonymous: "The people never know that I'm the one who found their family."

A 47-year-old mother of three, Summers runs a small karaoke business and says she is "dirt poor," but doesn't let that stop her. "If I can give someone a life-changing gift, I will," she says. "I'm a karma girl."

She began scanning her sources online — ancestry.com, peoplefinders.com, archives.com — looking for public records of girls named Raylene born in the early seventies near Saul, Kentucky. Raylene's birth record would have been amended at the time of her adoption with her new last name; Summers had to figure out that name. She hoped the adoptive parents hadn't changed the girl's first name, too.

Texting Ferguson into the wee hours of the night, Summers asked questions about her past. "My life became 100% consumed" with the search, Ferguson says. "I started to feel mentally exhausted. I cried every day for a while."

Summers, for her part, was having trouble finding a Raylene who filled the bill. Then Ferguson had a flicker of a thought that turned out to be a major brainstorm: Maybe the name is off.Perhaps it's "Rae Lynn," which sounds a lot like "Raylene." After hearing this, Summers began a new sweep of the birth records.

In the meantime, Ferguson posted a Facebook note asking if anyone from her hometown in Kentucky could look for old newspaper articles about her birth family or the fire. Enter another helpful stranger. "A woman spent an entire day at the library searching through microfilm," Ferguson says. That evening, the good Samaritan sent a message in all-capital letters: OMG. She had found an article about Ferguson's father.

The powerful little news clip — "Saul Man Dies in Explosion" — summed up the tragedy of Frank Williams and his family in just a few paragraphs: Williams was working under his home about 1 P.M. Friday when a gas line apparently broke, causing an explosion, the newspaper read.

"To see that story was just incredible," Ferguson says. "Stories change when they're passed down through families. But seeing it in print, it made everything that much more real." She posted it on Facebook, filling in the pieces of the family puzzle.

The "Angel" IntervenesAcross the country, Summers unearthed a birth record for a "Rae Lynn" born in the right place, but possibly a bit later than the right time. That woman still lived in Kentucky. Ferguson got her hopes up. "It was like when you strike a match and it bursts into flame — that's how I felt," she says. She excitedly wrote to the woman on Facebook, sending a "rambling message with many typos," she says. "I sounded crazy!"

The woman said she didn't think they could be sisters — she hadn't been adopted. Ferguson thought that perhaps this woman's parents had concealed the truth from their child and asked if she would take a DNA test. On June 21, Ferguson posted on Facebook:SISTER UPDATE!!! She has agreed to DNA testing in person!

They met at a bar and grill along the banks of the Ohio River. "We were nice to each other, but neither of us felt a deep connection," Ferguson says. "Still, I was holding out hope." The two women went to the bathroom and scraped the insides of their cheeks with swabs; these samples would contain enough cells for DNA analysis. Ferguson sent the swabs off to a lab in New Mexico she had found online.

The day the verdict was due, "I was checking my e-mail every hour," Ferguson recalls. "I finally got the e-mail at 4:15 P.M. I couldn't look at it — I made my husband read it. He told me she was not my sister." After that, "I felt absolutely devastated," she says. "It felt like I had lost my sister all over again. I needed some time to recover before I could dive back in, but Char wouldn't let me." Indeed, Summers vowed to find the right Rae Lynn: "I made a promise," says Summers. "And I had to keep it."

She set to work studying more birth records — including one on ancestry.com for a Rae Lynn Bailey, born at the right time and in the right place. She began tracking her down, spotting a "Lynn Bailey" on Facebook who lived in Gainesville, FL. Summers felt her heart race: Perhaps this woman had just dropped the "Rae" from her name. She dashed off a note to her.

"She immediately told me off," Summers says. "She said, 'I'm not sure what your game is, but I am not interested!' " So Summers explained herself. "I had to talk fast," she says.

Bailey decided to give the stranger a chance. She said she had indeed been adopted, and she knew she might have siblings. She had once tried to find them through an ancestry site, but hadn't known enough about her history to get anywhere.

Ferguson then connected with Bailey on Facebook, her hopes up once again. She wrote, I think you might be my sister. The two began sharing photos and comparing physical features. Both are blond, hazel-eyed, and have "backward-bending elbows," Ferguson says. "I felt an immediate connection." Her husband was more skeptical: "I thought, Here we go again," he says. "We'll need a box of Kleenex in three days when she's not the right one."

In mid-July, Ferguson posted on Facebook: I do believe I've found my sister! Our stories are the same! She wants to confirm with DNA before we get "too excited." Thanks, everyone. God bless you.

The women separately sent off DNA samples to the lab. "It was supposed to take a few days, but I made a mistake in the paperwork," Ferguson says. Several days passed. "I kept asking my husband, 'Why is it taking so long?' "

At the same time, she began to feel overwhelmed by all the Facebook notes from people who had been following the saga: They wanted to see pictures; they wanted more information. Bailey wanted privacy, and now Ferguson did, too. She took her Facebook page down, but that infuriated some of her followers. On an ancestry message board, one person said the whole thing was clearly a scam. Ferguson reinstated the Facebook page, apologizing to those she'd disappointed.

The DNA results finally arrived around two weeks later, in early August. Ferguson had lost six pounds by that point "from nerves," she says.

The news came via e-mail on Ferguson's phone; when she saw the message, she couldn't wait to click on it, but she also could hardly bear to: "I was on the edge of the sofa, biting my nails." So much was riding on that moment.

She made her husband open it, and he read the results in a mock Maury Povich voice. She heard the news she had dreamed of: It was a match. "I felt like I could jump over the Empire State Building," she says. "The search was over. The second I got that DNA report, I shot Lynn a copy via e-mail. She called me, bawling." It was the first time the two had spoken by phone.

Ferguson posted the news on Facebook: In the case of Tessa Ferguson and Rae Lynn…. It is 99.99% proven! Rae Lynn YOU ATE MY SISTER.

In her excitement, she had mis-typed "are," sparking some teasing from friends; she had more than 2,000 followers by then, some from as far away as France and Australia.

The two sisters began making plans to meet, texting and calling each other every day. "We started telling each other 'good night' every evening," Ferguson says. "About two weeks in, I wanted to say, 'I love you,' but I was afraid of how she'd take it. One night I just said it. She came back and said, 'I love you, too.' It was a moment of instant joy. That was the moment I felt complete. I slept with a smile on my face that whole night. We have told each other that we love each other every day since."

All Together NowEarly on the morning of August 17, Bailey was on a plane to Indiana.

Down a winding country lane in a leafy front yard, the two sisters met for the first time in four decades at Ferguson's home. They came together in a shaky, emotional embrace, hugging each other hard in the shade of the trees. They laughed and cried at the same time, then stepped apart and stood face-to-face, holding hands and just gazing at each other. "Well, hi!" Ferguson said.

"Hi," Bailey said back, laughing. "I can't believe this is happening." Then they wrapped their arms around each other again, hanging on tight. The little girl with the outstretched arms had finally come home.

Their sister Becky Hilliard joined them in the embrace. "The last time I saw you, you were a little baby," she said to Bailey, sending the trio into a new flood of tears. The afternoon was cloudless, breezy; leaves rustled in the trees. Other family members — kids, husbands — stood by, giving the sisters time before piling in.

Later on the porch, Ferguson, Bailey, and Hilliard had a natural ease with one another, sitting barefoot and comparing coffee-drinking habits. They sipped iced tea from jelly jars and couldn't stop smiling. Ferguson says there was simply an intangible bond: "It's like your best friend who you go a few months without talking to…then you get together and it's like no time has elapsed."

A mother of two who works as a revenue analyst in Florida, Bailey was raised knowing that her biological parents had died in an accident; she assumed it had been a car wreck. The day Summers contacted her, she says, she was astounded — and suspicious.

"Her note was so intimate and out of the blue," she says. After her initial mistrust, Bailey decided it was worth a shot — perhaps there was another family, her birth family, to connect with after all.

Late in the afternoon, the women's brother, Frank Williams, pulled into the driveway from Ohio. (Dena Barger, the other sister, was unable to make it in from Kentucky, but planned a later reunion.) Williams, red-haired with a boyish grin and a reputation for being the life of the party, embraced his long-lost sister. Bailey's eyes got misty as she studied her brother's face. "Now I know what my son will look like when he grows up," she said.

The next day on Facebook, Ferguson posted the reunion photos. Special thanks to the many good-hearted family, friends, and especially the strangers who shared in the search effort! she wrote. Her followers wished her well and moved on, content that the mystery had been solved.

PostscriptSince the reunion, Ferguson and Bailey have been in constant contact. "We e-mail every day and call on weekends," Ferguson says. They have also seen their sister Dena Barger in Kentucky, where Bailey went to their parents' graves and the family homesite — an intensely emotional visit for her. "I feel complete now, knowing where I was born and where my parents are buried," she says. "I'm proud of the fact that we all found our way back to each other after 40 years." They're all planning another family reunion for this coming summer.

Their "search angel," Summers, says she'll be there, too. "It's like she's part of the family," Ferguson says. The Facebook page that set her journey in motion has been retired; the time has come to move forward, she says. "We have a chance to create a whole new life, a whole new history."

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